


Ash

by SkartoArgento



Series: Drabbles [1]
Category: Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Nightmares, Sleeping Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2014-05-23
Packaged: 2018-01-26 05:04:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1675715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkartoArgento/pseuds/SkartoArgento
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buddy's nightmares are made of fire and screams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ash

——————————————————————————————————-

Nightmares are not like stories.

The school burns. The flames drive him back, into the arms of a stranger who mutters something into his ear. They are already dead. He sees Irina as though he’s in there with her. Her mouth opens in a shriek. Fire turns her hair into a torch. Skin crisps, blackens. She is still screaming.

Waking up is merely a switch in time and place.

He knows it was a nightmare as soon as he opens his eyes, but that doesn’t make it any less terrifying. The fear stings, raw, and he feels his heart pound as though it is an animal caught in the trap of his chest. Irina’s name is on his lips. Did he whisper it aloud, or dream that he did?

“Hey. It’s okay.”

He’s half-sitting, elbow on the pillow. He remembers the flames licking her skin.

“Buddy.” A hand finds his cheek. He flinches away from the fire. “It’s okay. It was just a dream.”

It wasn’t, he wants to say. She was screaming.

He lets the hand stay when it lies, warm on his shoulder. For one moment, shards of light from a passing car glint through the window, and the fire catches Leon’s face. A sound leaves his own throat, an embarrassing whimper that is half-child and half-wounded beast. The hand on his shoulder goes back to his cheek.

“It’s okay.”

“They didn’t even go in with guns.” The words are thick in his throat, on his tongue, but they struggle out regardless. Tears sting his eyes like he has walked through smoke. “They burned it to the ground.”

“I know.”

Leon shifts a little closer. He doesn’t even look tired. Was he already awake?

His breathing can’t calm itself down. It comes hard and fast, like he’s run from the fire and the school and her face cracking. Maybe he has. The sheets grip under his hands. Nothing he could do. He didn’t know, he wasn’t bad, they didn’t do anything, they were _good, neutral,_ not even rebels –

Leon presses him against his chest, and his heart is a soft thud, even and slow.

Hair tangles between his fingers, not clumped and singed. His palm moves down to stubble, then a chin. Then lips.

They kiss, and he knows it is just for comfort. He wants nothing else. Arms loop under and over. They tangle, a solid shield of holes and gaps where they still kiss and touch. Leon sighs and lets him nudge closer. Everything stops slowly, slides into a comfortable drowsiness.

The nightmare fades like dying embers. His memory of it turns to ash.


End file.
